Interviews and bios of the key players:
Montesinos Kurlander Blanca Romero Benavides Crespigny Maugein Gamarra
This interview between Ronald Gamarra and correspondent Lowell Bergman took place in June 2005 in Lima, Peru.
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Ronald Gamarra |
How did you come to prosecute, investigate the case related to Yanacocha?
Well, as a result of internal changes in the prosecutor's office, we investigated the Fujimori-Montesinos crimes that have been committed. I had to look into the topic of judicial corruption, and during the investigation, we found some declarations by Montesinos in which he admitted that he had intervened in some cases, among them, Yanacocha.
You say you got involved in judicial corruption related to Yanacocha. What kind of judicial corruption did you find?
Well, what I found were admissions by Vladimiro Montesinos Torres … and other members of the National Service of Intelligence [SIN], who admitted that they had intervened in favor of the Newmont company in a case they had with the French investors to discuss the topic of Yanacocha shares.
Intervention? Of what kind?
Montesinos reported that he and [President Fujimori] had received calls from Peter Romero, and the State Department in general, telling him of the advantages of deciding the case in favor of the Newmont company.
But it's not unusual for a government, in this case Peter Romero, the U.S. Assistant Secretary for Latin America Affairs, to contact another government and say we are interested in a case that's involving a company from our country and what is going on.
Yes, it is not unusual, as it was not unusual for the French to intervene in favor of BRGM. But what is unusual in this matter is that there is an audio and a video in which you can listen to and watch Montesinos talking to a judge and an unidentified person, where they are discussing the need to decide in favor of the Newmont case. And there also exists a statement by a political consultant of the National Intelligent Service, close to Montesinos, pointing out that he, Montesinos, had received a payment of $4 million. And in the prosecutor's office, there was documentation that stated that the judges had received payment.
When you say that there were $4 million, can you prove there were $4 million? Did you see the $4 million?
As a matter of fact, what we did was to gather, put together and present information to the [Peruvian attorney general] so that they would investigate it. What we told the [attorney general] is that we had conducted a small investigation and that we had found documentation that, if proven true, would indicate that a crime of corruption had been committed, and that it was [the attorney general's] responsibility to investigate. This is, for example, the document that we found. We have not stated if the document is true or false. What we have said to the [attorney general] is to investigate if the document is real or not.
So this is a list of what looks like deposits in the names of some of the justices of the [Peruvian] Supreme Court, yes?
It is the information we received, and for that reason we transmitted it to the attorney general to investigate and to also investigate the difference between one transcription of audio we found because the official version of the audio transcription is very short, and it indicates that most of what was discussed was unintelligible -- you can't hear it. However, we received information from the French saying they got hold of the audio, transcribed it, and, according to them, it was Larry Kurlander who was there speaking with Vladimiro Montesinos Torres. We asked the attorney general to request the original audio from [the Peruvian] congress and to transcribe it so that we could determine once and for all what was being talked about and who was present.
The French got the audio? I thought the tape was made by Montesinos.
Well, the audio was taped by Montesinos, like all the videos that have surfaced, and they were confiscated [by the Peruvian authorities].
But how did the French get hold of it?
I don't know, because we asked [the Peruvian] congress for a copy of the audio and we never received it. That's why I am saying we requested a judge at the attorney general's office to ask congress for the audio so the attorney general's office could transcribe it to determine what was the nature of the conversation and who was present. Because we also found out that on the date that the conversation in the audio took place, Larry Kurlander was in Peru.
Larry Kurlander says that meeting did take place, but that there are sections of the tape that are missing.
Well, that's exactly a matter that should have been thoroughly investigated by the attorney general of Peru.
And the woman who was present as the translator says she doesn't remember anything, and she doesn't know why they were having the meeting and that it's the only meeting she had with Montesinos where he asked her to translate.
And you are saying that the tape in question is produced by the French, who are party to the lawsuit.
What I am saying is that congress did a transcription, a very bad transcription in my opinion, that says the audio is practically inaudible. [The tape] was not necessarily going to coincide with what the French had, but we needed it in order to determine what was actually said.
Now these bank documents: Where did you get this document?
That document arrived to the prosecutor's office anonymously.
So there is no way to know if it is true?
The attorney general has or had the way of finding out if it was true or false.
And what happened?
I don't know, because when I turned in my report to the attorney general asking them to investigate, I was taken off the case.
Simply like that.
They told me this was not a case of judicial corruption but of financial corruption, and it wasn't within my legal scope.
So it wasn't your department.
That it wasn't my department. ... And that was it. That same day I had to hand over all the papers I had. And as far as I know, the attorney general never asked for the documentation from congress, and they never did a transcription of the audio.
So it has never been investigated since then.
I don't know. Supposedly, the attorney general did investigate because they made a final decision and closed the case. What they said, the little I know about the court decision, is that the bank said this document was false.
But the bank is owned by a good friend of Montesinos, who appears on some of the videotapes.
The owner of the bank is a friend of Montesinos, that appears in the video. And let's not forget that Montesinos fled to Panama in the owner of the bank's private plane.
So what do you think is going on?
I think it's a very important case in Peru, which no one was interested in investigating. There was a lot of pressure, I imagine, on the attorney general. I don't know if the bank handed over the exact information or if they hid it, but what I do know is that the attorney general didn't do everything possible to investigate this deed. And the attorney general's decision was never appealed. No one contested the decision when it was still possible to appeal.
The U.S. government investigated Newmont to see if it had paid anyone overseas for favors in Peru and concluded that they could not prove or demonstrate that any payments were made. They also said that the attorney general in Peru could not find any credible evidence of any money changing hands and relied on that investigation to close their case.
I insist, we in the prosecutor's office had information that showed that it was possible those payments were made. We asked the attorney general of Peru to investigate, but they did not sufficiently investigate the case.
In your experience, had anything like this ever happened before?
No, not that I know of in the history of the prosecutor's office, and as for me personally, it's the first and only time that happened. It was the only case I got taken off of, the only case where Yanacocha lawyers showed up in my office to question my actions, and it was one of the only cases that certain members of the press attacked me for during Holy Week.
I don't understand. The lawyers for Yanacocha were criticizing you and your attempt to investigate, and the press was criticizing you for trying to investigate. Why?
There were basically two criticisms. The first was that this was not a crime of judicial corruption. What they told me later, to get me off the case officially, the Yanacocha lawyers said to me, first, that I did not have the qualifications to take on that type of case. And the second criticism was that the documents were false. And I maintained that I was investigating the judges. I wasn't investigating the businessmen of Yanacocha. I was investigating the judges. And secondly, I wasn't saying that the document was true or false, but rather that it needed to be investigated. Another thing I thought it was important for the attorney general to investigate was the fact that Newmont's lawyer received more than $10 million for his professional services. I asked that the rumor be investigated that part of the money was used to pay the judges.
And in the end, were some of the judges who were involved, were they convicted of corruption in other cases?
Of those that appear as possible beneficiaries of corruption, two are being prosecuted. One has been convicted for acts of corruption, and he has a second count for being a member of the criminal association headed by Montesinos-Fujimori. There is another judge who is a fugitive, and he only needs to be captured to be read his conviction.
And Beltrán, Judge Beltrán?
In the case of Beltrán, the congress said there were no crimes or constitutional infractions. In other words, there were no crimes, that the video did not constitute criminal activity.
Even though he met with someone not involved in the case, a government official, and discussed the case.
I don't agree with congress's decision. I think they should have investigated Beltrán's case in court.
Do you know Roque Benavides?
I know who he is, but I've never met him in my life.
But you know that he was a partner, that Buenaventura is a partner with Newmont in this case.
Yes, of course.
And we know that Larry Kurlander met with Montesinos to discuss their case.
Of course.
Is it believable that the Benavides family would not know that Mr. Kurlander was meeting with Montesinos?
Ah, no. I am sure -- it is a belief of mine -- that the Benavides family knew that Larry Kurlander was meeting with Vladimiro Montesinos Torres. What's more, Guillermo Gulman, their own lawyer, knew [representatives from Newmont Mining] were coming from the United States to talk to the Peruvian government. So then I imagine if Gulman knew, then the Benavides family or some of its members must have also known.
So the Americans say that all they were trying to do was level the playing field because they believed that the French, Mr. Maugein and others, were trying to influence the government through bribery, through a letter to Fujimori, through other activities. Do you believe that?
That's true, that the French were very active and that the French ambassador spoke with the president of the Supreme Court or with some heads of the court. What the Americans should have done, in any case, was to talk to the Peruvian authorities, not with Vladimiro Montesinos Torres. The Americans should have talked to the Peruvian judges and said they believed an interference was taking place.
In any case, I also want to say that in our report to the attorney general, not only did we ask that they investigate the matter of the judges receiving money from the Americans but also to investigate the pressure the French were putting on the judges. And that also wasn't thoroughly investigated.
But he [Montesinos] says in his testimony and he says in his conversations with Beltrán, the judge, on the videotape and he says in his conversations with American officials that he's doing this for national security reasons, because of a peace treaty and because of what President Fujimori says to him. He never speaks of money.
That's what he says in the testimony, that's what he says, but he wasn't going to admit that he was gaining financial reward for serving political interests.
But that's sort of unusual because he knows he's on videotape with bags of money. Why would he simply say now that this is national security? Is he lying about this and everything else?
Well, what I think is that there was corruption, that Montesinos didn't make the payment directly to the judges. No one has ever accused Montesinos of giving the money to the judges himself, but that the money came from other avenues.
At the time of the case … the high judiciary of Peru was corrupt: Is that true?
Yes, of course. And not just because it decided cases according to the interests of Montesinos, but also because there were some judges who had their own corruption rings. Lamentably, the judicial system in Peru at the time was a corrupt system. And it was also controlled by Vladimiro Montesinos Torres. Any trial that suited his interests was decided according to whatever he said. But there also were judges who had corruption rings and would in some cases take bribes.
So if I am Newmont and Buenaventura and I have a very big case in the Supreme Court with hundreds of millions of dollars at stake, maybe billions of dollars, I better be very careful.
Yes, of course. And not just go talk to the judges. I imagine you have to launch a public relations campaign in the media and, at the end of the day, have some good contacts, right? But that is one thing, and it's another to go speak to the person who controls the judiciary in a corrupt way.
So you say it's wrong to go to Montesinos?
Yes, of course.
Alberto Benavides and Larry Kurlander say they wrote a letter to the president of Peru [that said they were] worried about this case and what the French were doing. And the reply they got from the president, according to Mr. Kurlander, was "Go see Vladimiro Montesinos." So Larry Kurlander goes to see Montesinos.
Well, I am very skeptical of versions like that one, which, by the way, is not the first time I've heard these versions, but that I've heard from others who try to justify their meetings with Montesinos, saying Alberto Fujimori indicated they should go see Montesinos. I don't believe that.
So if you are a businessman in Peru five years ago or at the time of this case, what else would you do? Go to a prosecutor like you? Go to a prosecutor like you who will then have the case taken away?
What they should have done in the first place is go to talk to the judges who were going to decide the case -- talk with them and then go to the press and present their positions and find a way of establishing a decision based on what was fair. But not go talk to the person who wrongly controls the judiciary because in a democracy, one cannot go talk to the person who unjustly controls the system because to go to him is to win the case.
But you see the predicament? Do you see their side? It was not a democracy. It was not transparent, so they were caught.
No, but then they go to Montesinos to win the case, right? Because they didn't want a decision based on justice, but rather they were going to talk to the one who was going to get them a favorable sentence by whatever means necessary, and it didn't matter who was right or wrong.
The tape of the conversation between Kurlander and Montesinos, where did you say it came from?
An audio exists that was confiscated, along with other audios and videos, from Vladimiro Montesinos Torres. Those videos and audios were handed over to the courts and then to the congress of the Republic. From there, the congress made a transcription that was lacking, in my opinion.
You said at one time that you got the tape recording and/or the transcript from the French.
What I said was that I received a transcription sent by the French. There was a marked difference between the original transcription in congress and the one sent by the French.
Sure, but what do you mean you got a French transcript? From the French government?
No, no, no, no … from these men, Mr. Crossley [Alan Crossley, Maugein's partner who lives in Madrid].
Crossley and Patrick Maugein came to you with the transcript?
It arrived to the prosecutor's office. I am not so foolish to believe blindly what these men are sending me. What I did was compare notes and tell the attorney general to investigate, to request the original, to make a new transcription, to see whether the original transcription corresponded to the one in congress or the one that the French handed over.
Does the original of that audiotape exist in the congressional files?
Yes, that's why there was a transcription done. The transcription was done of the audios and videos that are in congress.
You are an attorney. There are rules of evidence. There must be an original somewhere, an exhibit. And what you are saying is, you were given a transcript that was incomplete by the congress, and some people who we identify as the French deliver a transcript that appears to be more complete and an audio that is hard to hear. How can this be?
Evidently, that audio does indeed exist. Now, whether it is in the congress or not, that is a matter that I don't know. If it was lost in the congress, if it was stolen, or if it remains in the congress, I don't know. But in making the transcription, the congress accepted that they had the audio and, at least according to the judge that delivered the videos and audios, that audio was indeed in the congress.
But when they [the prosecutors investigating corruption under Fujimori-Montesinos] go to ask for the audio, we are told it doesn't exist, they don't have it.
Well, someone must have taken it, one group or the other, but it is in some party's interest that the proof disappear, to show that there was a crime committed or that there wasn't a crime committed.
There were billions of dollars involved.
There are strange things that should have been the object of investigation by the attorney general and that is what I asked for.
It's unusual for an attorney in Peru to get paid more than $10 million for working on a small part of a case. You interviewed Mr. Gulman. What was his explanation, and do you believe him?
With the exception of this case, I don't know of any in all of the history of Peru where a lawyer has earned more than $10 million for his professional services. I spoke with Mr. Gulman. Mr. Gulman admitted it was that amount, and a little more on top, for his professional services. And that he had declared it all to the Peruvian authorities.
And what is his explanation?
The amount of money he saved Newmont, that he won for them.
But some people suspected that … his fee [being] so big … was in part because he made these payments to the judges. Could he account for all the money?
He indicated that he had shown his tax statements to the fiscal authorities in Peru.
He paid taxes?
He paid taxes on all the money he received from Newmont.
But did he account for all of it in terms of showing that none of it could have gone for bribes?
That's what the attorney general would need to see about, if they even asked for all the documentation.
But you don't know if the attorney general looked or didn't look.
I don't know, and I am inclined to believe that they never asked for it.
Did you ask the attorney general, "Have you investigated what Gulman did with all that money?"
No, because I was off the case.
Has anyone ever asked?
Not that I am aware of.
So now with three years to think about it, why do you think you were taken off the case? Why hasn't anyone completed the investigation?
First, because I am convinced there are strange things that were probably criminal in nature. That neither the French nor the Americans behaved appropriately. And that it did not benefit anyone to investigate the matter, either of those involved in the proceedings, whether it be the French or the Americans.
And so now you know why we are interested in the case.
I always knew it was a matter of great interest.